Further Reading

Back in April, when Nintendo discontinued the hot ticket NES Classic Edition after just six months on the market, it prompted us to suggest in a headline that "Nintendo hates money." Someone at Nintendo must have figured out that money is good, though, because Nintendo announced this morning that the $60 plug-and-play retro console will be coming back to retailers "next summer."

Nintendo promised more details in the future and didn't provide any explanation as to why we'll have to wait through an entire fall, winter, and spring before more NES Classic units are available. Component shortages seem to be a likely culprit, though; Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé recently told the Financial Times about the "challenge" of managing a complex global supply chain, especially when it comes to bottlenecks on multiple Switch components.

With the pending Super NES Classic Edition likely using similar components to the NES Classic, producing both systems at once could complicate that supply chain even further. As Fils-Aimé put it to Time after the NES Classic's initial discontinuation, "We've got a lot going on right now and we don't have unlimited resources."

As for the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo for the first time today committed to producing the system "into 2018," rather than cutting off units at the end of the calendar year as previously announced. The company promised that the September 29 launch would see more units of the Super NES Classic than the NES Classic saw "all last year, with subsequent shipments arriving in stores regularly."

For context, the NES Classic sold 1.5 million units through January of 2017, and the bulk of those systems likely shipped before the end of 2016. That means we could easily see more than a million Super NES Classic units on store shelves on day one, a launch that would rival the likes of the Xbox One and the PS4. That probably won't be enough to fully satisfy what Nintendo acknowledges is "unbridled enthusiasm for these Classic Edition systems," but it at least provides people with a better chance of finding one on store shelves at a local retailer.

Further Reading

Speaking to FT last week, Fils-Aimé had promised a "dramatic increase" in Super NES Classic production, and he tried to tamp down a feeding frenzy among secondhand resellers. "I would strongly urge you not to over-bid on an SNES Classic on any of the auction sites," Fils-Aimé told the paper. "You shouldn't [have to] pay more than $79.99."

Reading between the lines, it seems plausible that Nintendo will crank out as many Super NES Classic Editions as it can through next spring, at which point it will start to wind things down to ramp up production facilities toward the summer relaunch of the NES Classic. Regardless of the specifics, Nintendo's public stance suggests the company has finally fully accepted the huge interest in its Classic system line and is reconfiguring its resources to help satisfy that interest.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl